In praise of the marketing rant

I’ve never seen it in a rule book, but I’m pretty sure a good community manager is never supposed to be in a bad mood. Not publicly, at least.

So it surprised me when I had a bad day, shared this photo on Raven’s Facebook page—captioned “When marketers lose patience…”—and watched it spread quickly.

Sometimes, it seems, people just need to say what they’re thinking.

With that in mind, I shared these recent marketing rants in May’s edition of the Ravenous Marketer newsletter. (Actually, I shared all of this, pretty near word-for-word. Repurposing content, folks. Repurposing.)

Whether you agree or disagree, (and Raven doesn’t endorse any points of view below except our own, and even then we argue with each other) you might be moved to action. That’s the point of any good rant, right? Maybe you’ll even write a rant for Raven’s new Squawk, an Internet marketing news and commentary website.

SEO rants!

No matter what the penalty or update is, there will always be an SEO there to brag about how they’ve never had a site penalized — as if that’s something to be proud of. —Ben Cook, who’s always up for a rant

I hate SEO tools, and yes that’s a double entendre. It seems harsh, but I do. Tools make many SEOs lazy. Tools make many SEOs look better than they are. Tools, are just that. Tools. —Mike Wilton, the last person I thought would write this

I’ve resisted using the term since it was first introduced. … Perhaps I’ll change my mind and start using it if that’s what the industry as a whole starts to use. I mean, I still want to make money—principles be damned! —by Jon Henshaw, the Raven co-founder who has been burning to write this for so long he created Squawk

Let’s just be honest here for a minute. 94% of the website owners rushing to grab a seat on the content marketing bandwagon are doing so with one primary objective — to get links. —Rae Hoffman, who has a way with a metaphor

First, I’m going to talk about why LinkedIn Endorsements are about as meaningful as having Paris Hilton teach etiquette classes to pre-teen girls. Once I’m done spouting off, I’m going to teach you how to turn them off. —Erika Napoletano, who would be disappointed about those asterisks

Your-writing-is-unoriginal rants!

Instead of writing 5 or 10 crappy blog posts, do some research for yourself, write some code. Try something new, and then write a real good blog post. In fact, I’d rather read about 10 of your failings then about that one “success”. —Yoast, a.k.a. Joost de Valk (or vice versa)

It’s possible that you are terrible at your job, but it’s also possible that you don’t know what you’re doing is overkill. Consider this a head’s up. —Arienne Holland, who I can count on for at least one mini-rant a day

I’m not here to hate—at least one of these links is mine—just to tell you that these sources that can teach you something about marketing are officially taken. —Yours truly, Courtney Seiter, who disguised this rant as a list

Children who rant better than adults!

Why do all the girls have to buy princesses? Some girls like superheroes. Some girls like princesses. —Riley on YouTube, with astute observations in the toy aisle